Invasion!

Invasion!, the first production by the long-incubating Badass Theatre Company, is a beautiful little honey pot of a play—luring its viewers into one type of play only to recruit them unawares into entirely unexpected scenarios. Stage vets Nicole Accuardi, Chantal DeGroat, Gilberto Martin Del Campo and John San Nicolas capably move through multiple roles and sometimes genders in a kaleidoscopic romp through the fields of Middle Eastern identity in America, with a cast of characters that includes Lebanese pipe fitters who cross-dress only on trips to America, Turkish telemarketers, Kabuki-choreographed military experts on a hammy talk show, and troublemaking kids exposed to something far too serious for a summer vacation. Under Antonio Sonera’s direction, the play moves freely from shock tactics to broad comedy to sudden pathos, keeping viewers off their moorings without sending them out to sea. At the center of it all is Abulkasem, a name that stands as totem for everything: terrorism, exoticism, mildly unsuccessful second-generation immigrants, any feeling for which words fail. It is a word unhinged from all reference and thus also threatening. Like the mysterious V of Thomas Pynchon’s eponymous novel, Abulkasem is the conspiracy we see in everything, or the dark vision at the corner of the eye. But if this vital first production is any indication, Badass Theatre Company won’t linger too long in anyone’s peripheral vision.

Ecologically themed art tends to be dull and sanctimonious, but not so in the hands of Wesley Younie. His idylls of environmental paradise lost abound with equal parts whimsy and intelligence. In the ...